


Temba, His Arms Wide

by firefly124



Series: 2020 AdventDrabbles [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU in which 15x19 made sense and 15x20 didn't happen, Community: adventdrabbles, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28295985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124
Summary: It wasn't like Charlie had never sat down with various types of clergy before. This was just the first time it wasn't for a case.
Relationships: Charlie Bradbury/Stevie (Supernatural: The Rupture)
Series: 2020 AdventDrabbles [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050380
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Temba, His Arms Wide

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the prompt [girl in Saint Lucia’s Day crown](https://imgur.com/a/x2L7prn) for the [AdventDrabbles community on Dreamwidth](https://adventdrabbles.dreamwidth.org/). 
> 
> Huge thanks to badritual for the sensitivity read! 
> 
> Note: this is a follow-up to an earlier ficlet in this series, [Rabbi for Chanukkah](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28001175), and may make little sense without that context.

This wasn’t quite the most bizarre thing Charlie had ever done for a girlfriend. There had been that one time Maja had gotten her to wear a wreath on her head with lit candles for Saint-Somebody’s day. At least Stevie’s religion kept the candles in a candle-holder and not on anyone’s head where they might or might not set someone’s hair on fire.

It wasn’t so much that it was weird to be meeting a rabbi for coffee, as that it was weird to be meeting one for something that wasn’t actually a case. Also, Charlie wasn’t entirely sure this guy was an actual rabbi. He’d come highly recommended though, despite Dean getting kind of flustered and saying he was a little unusual.

He was eying the bacon on the next table, though, which seemed pretty un-rabbi-like. Then again, what did Charlie know?

“I’m sorry.” He dragged his attention back to her. “So, your girlfriend from another universe, that you’re also from, is Jewish, because Judaism exists there, and is having an existential crisis over how any of that works in this universe?”

“I mean, crisis might be overstating it,” Charlie said. “It’s kind of my fault for bringing up whether the calendars were really the same or not.”

“Considering I’m having an existential crisis over G-d turning out to be an asshole so bad that Lucifer’s kid is an improvement, I’m thinking it probably fits.” He sighed and glanced over at the neighboring table again.

“Dude, you realize there’s vegan bacon out there,” Charlie said. “Pretty sure that’d count as kosher.”

“Yeah, it’s not the same.” He picked up his bagel and took a bite out of it, chewing thoughtfully.

“I don’t think Stevie would expect you to have some perfect answer,” Charlie said. “From what she’s told me, that’s not really how you guys work.”

“I can talk to her,” he said. “I’m not sure it’ll help anything though.”

“Having another Jewish person to talk to who actually knows all the shit that just went down would probably help no matter what,” Charlie said. “I mean, she can vent to me, obviously, but there’s stuff you can relate to that’s all Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra to me.”

The rabbi blinked at her owlishly.

“Exactly,” she said.

“Did you seriously just quote Star Trek the Next Generation?” he asked. “You had Star Trek the Next Generation in your universe?”

“Hey, just because we had an apocalypse, don’t go thinking we’re barbarians.” Charlie sniffed. “You’ve had a few of them here, too.”

“That’s fair,” he agreed. “Sure, I’ll talk to her. It’d be nice to do something rabbi-ish that doesn’t involve Nazi necromancers.”

“Did you say ‘Nazi necromanders’?” Charlie asked, lowering her voice. Then she internally kicked herself. If anyone overheard them, they already thought the two of them were insane or probably talking about some video game too weird for even her to dream up. “Because we had some Gestapo-looking angel that almost killed me, but I think we managed to miss out on the Nazi necromancers.”

“Guess we’ve got stories to swap in our schmooze,” he said. He gulped down the rest of his coffee. “So, when are we doing this?”

“Schmooze?” Charlie asked. Then she shook her head. “Right. Shaka when the walls fell. Um, dinner tonight?”

“Sounds good.” The rabbi frowned. “Did the guys mention that my plus-one is kind of plus sized?”

By the time he got done explaining that, Charlie decided that this was, actually, the most bizarre thing she’d ever done for a girlfriend.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of various ST:TNG references from the episode Darmok source: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Darmok_(episode)
> 
> Temba, his arms wide - giving and receiving; alternately "I'll go along with that"
> 
> Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra - refers to both the ST:TNG episode in which one species uses metaphors based on their own history for all communication, causing translation problems, and also specifically joining forces with someone against a common enemy/adversary/problem
> 
> Shaka, when the walls fell - translation is roughly "disaster," but here is just meant as another reference to cultural gaps causing communication gaps, as it was the second most-used phrase after "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" in that episode (I was unaware of the use of "schmooze" for anything other than working a crowd for a fundraiser or something until a Jewish friend introduced this usage to me as just "having a chat," and I presume Charlie would be similarly surprised by it.)


End file.
